7/15/2009

Today, I stumbled across this odd photo of a “gutter pin” from a huge bowling center in Yokohama* that is being torn down.

One of the oddities of Japan is that almost all bowling alleys here have the same giant 5-meter bowling pin made of fiberglass mounted on their roofs.

For some mysterious reason, these massive bowling pins never fall off during typhoons even when the building it is mounted on is severely damaged (too bad Japanese buildings are not created with the same quality as these advertising objects).

*Here’s an urban exploration video of ruins of the “gutter pin” building taken last year.

Odd EngRish factoid:
If you look up the Japanese translation for “bowling,” you will find it has the almost the same pronunciation as “boring”—Most Japanese cannot distinguish or say either word correctly. This results in all sorts of fun confusion when Japanese people ask an English speaker anything about bowling or ask gaijin/foreigners to join them.

And of course, bowling and boring are not to be confused with Japanese department store bimbos’ bowing…

Click for full size photo, 500×666.